Using a novel approach called tumor-treating fields—which involves the delivery of low-intensity electric fields to the brain by a patient-operated device—along with standard-of-care temozolomide therapy improved overall survival and progression-free survival vs temozolomide alone in patients with...

Cancer is the second-leading cause of death across the globe. Significant efforts, such as the National Cancer Moonshot Initiative and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Moon Shots Program, will drive advances in cancer prevention, screening, and treatment. However, right ...

In a study reported in JAMA, Ali H. Mokdad, PhD, and colleagues from the University of Washington, Seattle, found that cancer mortality rates in the United States dropped from 240.2 to 192.0 per 100,000 population between 1980 and 2014.1 Mortality rates varied widely among U.S....

A recent study by Mokdad and colleagues, reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post, looks at cancer demographic data for 28 cancers and compares mortality rates in 1980 to results in 2014.1 Publishing mortality rates by geographic area and the observation of significant differences is...

The race is on to identify combinations of immune checkpoint inhibitors that can improve outcomes over the use of immune checkpoint inhibitor monotherapy. Updated results of the phase III CheckMate 067 trial found the combination of nivolumab (Opdivo) and ipilimumab (Yervoy) improved survival in...

At 5 years, the overall survival rate was 16% in patients with advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treated with single-agent nivolumab (Opdivo), according to follow-up of a phase Ib dose-ranging study (CA209-003), presented at the American Association for Cancer Research...

Hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemoperfusion is efficacious when used as part of multimodality therapy for low-volume peritoneal metastases of gastric cancer, suggests a prospective single-arm phase II trial.1

Among the 19 patients enrolled, all of whom had stage IV disease with ­either...

Here are several abstracts selected from the proceedings of this year’s American Society of Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting & Exposition, highlighting newer therapeutics in various types of high-grade, aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphomas (NHLs), including peripheral T-cell lymphomas, central...

The Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute is using a sophisticated new way to diagnose and treat prostate cancer more effectively. Urology specialists at Karmanos have begun using the UroNav Fusion Biopsy System, which fuses three-dimensional MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) images of the prostate...

Melanoma is an immunogenic tumor, as it expresses various melanoma-specific antigens. However, it is both biologically and clinically heterogeneous. Biologically, it expresses different melanoma antigens and has diverse genetic profiles among different patients. Clinically, it varies ...

Cancer Research UK has announced that six leading American scientists are among the winners of a global competition to help overcome the biggest challenges facing cancer research. The initial $87 million “Grand Challenge” fund will be distributed across 4 international teams of academics from 6...

Kelly Cares Foundation recently became one of the newest supporters of the Conquer Cancer Foundation of ASCO Young Investigator Awards, the flagship program begun in 1984 to support early-career cancer researchers. The mission of Kelly Cares Foundation is to inspire hope by investing resources to...

The ASCO Annual Meeting involves a lot of walking—wear comfortable shoes and show your support for cancer research by participating in the Conquer Cancer Foundation (CCF) Laces campaign. Make a donation to CCF when you register for the 2017 Annual Meeting, and you will...

On April 5, ASCO announced that Instituto de Oncologia do Vale (IOV) was the first practice in Brazil to receive Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI®) certification through the QOPI Certification Program, LLC (QCP). IOV is the second international practice to achieve this milestone in...

Social media is a uniquely positioned platform that can spread specific knowledge to a larger audience. Unlike traditional media, it allows anyone to join the conversation, and according to the Pew Research Center, it is here to stay, with 79% of online American adults using Facebook and 24% using...

Registration is now open for the ASCO Research Community Forum 2017 Annual Meeting. Join fellow physician investigators and research staff from across the country for this unique meeting focused on sharing best practices for effectively conducting and managing clinical research and developing...

The ASCO Answers Palliative Care booklet shows how palliative care is used to manage symptoms and side effects; help with practical concerns; address spiritual questions; and support caregivers, family, and friends. Readers will find:

From immunomodulatory agents and proteasome inhibitors to steroids, alkylators, and antibodies, recent years have witnessed an explosion of drug approvals for multiple myeloma. The challenge now, said Amrita Krishnan, MD, FACP, is figuring out how to incorporate them all,...

Minimal residual disease is a promising biomarker for guiding the management of multiple myeloma that is becoming increasingly important with the advent of more efficacious therapies, according to emerging data and expert opinion.

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) together with the National Black Church Initiative (NBCI) announced the launch of a church-based initiative addressing striking health-care disparities among African Americans with multiple myeloma. Black Americans have twice the incidence of multiple...

On March 23, 2017, avelumab (Bavencio) was granted accelerated approval for treatment of patients aged ≥ 12 years with metastatic Merkel cell carcinoma. Avelumab is the first U.S. Food and Drug Administration–approved product to treat this disease.1,2

Hematologist-oncologist Ahmad Samer Al-Homsi, MD, MBA, will lead a new bone marrow transplantation program at New York University (NYU) Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center for treating blood-borne cancers and potentially utilize transplantation as an adjunct to immunotherapy for solid tumors. He...

The field of psycho-oncology began to take hold in the mid-1970s, when the “C” word was beginning to lose its long-held stigmatization, and patients with cancer could finally begin to openly reveal their diagnosis and express their feelings about their life-threatening disease. Despite that...

Luis A. Diaz, MD, has been named Head of the Division of Solid Tumor Oncology in the Department of Medicine at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK). Dr. Diaz most recently served as Associate Professor of Oncology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr. Diaz formally...

Getting a callback after a routine screening mammogram in 2013 did not set off any alarm bells. Having dense breasts has almost guaranteed receiving the dreaded callback ever since I started getting annual screenings. But when I got a second callback after additional images of a...

In a retrospective study in three U.S. institutions reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Pelosof et al found that never smokers accounted for an increasing proportion of cases of non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) during the period from 1990 to 2013. Joan Schiller, MD, of the...

In the FIRES prospective cohort study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Emma C. Rossi, MD, of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and colleagues found that sentinel lymph node mapping was highly accurate in detecting metastases compared with complete lymphadenectomy in women with...

In a phase II trial reported in The Lancet Oncology, Brigitte Dréno, MD, of Nantes University, Nantes, France, and colleagues found that two long-term intermittent vismodegib (Erivedge) dosing regimens provided a similar reduction in the number of clinically significant basal cell carcinomas among...